I’ve done a little test with MM syncing my existing music library to a USB stick I can then plug into the car and it works great. The car system is a bit clunky but it works. MM obviously has a lot of functionality which I haven’t investigated, and the file names are a mess – 01, 2 etc before the song name, hyphens etc. Are there any easy ways of mass removing crap? Also I’ve got an odd one where I reunited Kirsty McCall with Kirsty MacColl by editing the album properties but whilst the tracks move the art work remains in the McCall entry with no associated tracks.
Anyway I know some here use it a lot so any user tips or handy functions would be appreciated. TIA!
mp3tag is your friend (and free).
MediaMonkey has a extremely good tag editor onboard, tagging to the ID3v2 standard. It can also convert tags of the older ID3v1 standard, if necessary.
On the Tools menu there’s Auto-Tag from Web (if you can find a reliable database online to point it at – I never have), Auto-Tag from Filename (if the filename is in a sensible format), or a few different options under Advanced Tag Management.
Apple’s iTunes used to be notoriously flaky with file tagging. Had a habit of re-writing your perfectly fine tags to those held in it’s online database, which was full of errors. That was a prime reason that I abandoned iTunes for MediaMonkey. WMP was much better at it but was awkward and clunky IIRC.
With MediaMonkey you can get all your tags sorted out before putting them on the stick, which can be very time-consuming unfortunately, but even then you might find that the car’s playing system won’t interpret them properly anyway.
You’re correct on the car – it seems to have a knack for finding all the crap data I didn’t spot in MM.
@fentonsteve
You have a rival⬆️😳
I’m so old-school that I’ve never used any of these “media” things to manage tags. Horses for courses:
Rip using EAC, because it is the best ripper.
Tag using mp3tag, because it is a (the best) tag editor.
Playback using VLC because it is the Swiss Army Knife of playback apps.
Bonus: they’re all free.
VLC doesn’t sync though does it?
Probably not but, with my user case*, I don’t care about that, because: dinosaur.
(*) in car: USB stick, on foot: Fiio, at PC: VLC, in music room: NAS running media server app and rendered by streaming preamp.
I loathe any software that claims to synchronise digital assets. I will not tolerate a piece of code mucking about with the distribution of files over which only I should have control. Files live within my operating system’s file management system under my control. I decide where files get copied, where files get updated, where files get deleted, and where files get saved. No application makes those decisions for me. Synch sucks as far as I’m concerned. If it goes wrong or makes the wrong choices, I likely won’t find out until it’s too late to put things back the way they were, the way I wanted them. Synch is for lazy-ass folk who can’t be arsed to take sufficient care to look after their own digital assets.
/last rant of the year (probably)
*removes tongue from cheek*
Agreed on Auto Tag from filename (or using the Ctrl+Q keyboard shortcut). You have all your files follwing the same naming pattern, right?
If you have a version older than MM 2024 you can download user scripts (or write your own!) to mess around with the library and tags such as artwork. They are in Visual Basic which is reasonably easy to understand.
This site has some really good 3rd party scripts: https://www.riklewis.com/mediamonkey/
Of course the old version is no longer supported, but never really goes tits up. For real nerds it also has a built in SQL editor which you can access by hitting Ctrl+F9. The latest version has moved scripts to javascript, the worst programming language ever invented.
I’ve got all my files and tags organised now (thanks indeed to MM) so the new version is fine for my purposes. If I was coming in to the MM universe wanting a good tags editor I’d go for an older than 2024 version.
I have to ask. Why would you want a USB stick in a clunky automotice user interface when you could use speech to ask your phone to play pretty much any song, album or playlist from your library?
I don’t have everything on my phone. It’s a good point though.
If you have a streaming service (appreciate its an if), then you don’t need anything on your phone other than the streaming app and a reasonable amount of data on your mobile service.
The ability to press a button on my steering wheel and say “play music by Jethro Tull”* and then get a shuffled selection is, in my opinion, why the internet has been built (Afterword aside, of course).
* I have never actually said this but I am assured it would work.
Theoretically I agree with you but in practice you run your eyes over your own collection and think “AHH, that Jenny Lewis (or whatever artist) album is good, I’d forgotten all about it” and play it. You simply can’t do this with streamers, there’s too much of it.
“Did you mean ‘Play David Bowie?'”
*gives up and plays something from phone*